Changing the default open and save folder in Microsoft Office

Q. Why is it that every time I open Microsoft Excel and I try to open a file, the My Documents folder pops up first instead of My Computer? How can I change that?

A. Microsoft uses the My Documents folder as the default location for managing document files, such as Word docs and Excel spreadsheets as well as image, video and music files.

Since Excel is a Microsoft product and is designed to work as seamlessly as possible with Windows, it makes the assumption that the average computer user will be working from files stored in the My Documents folder.

For the majority of Windows users, this is just fine and is of a great benefit in keeping files organized and easy to find.

There are some who have for their own filing system. This may may be a custom folder on the primary hard drive or even on an external drive or network share. In this case, having program like Excel default to the My Documents folder is of no benefit.

You can change the default folder Microsoft applications use when opening or saving files pretty easily, but since the method varies depending on which version of Office you are using I will just direct you to The CNET article “Change your default Save As folder in Office” which explains the steps for all versions quite concisely.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that you can set this to default to My Computer, only to a specific drive and folder.